


catch your breath

by callunavulgari



Series: Dark Month Collection [84]
Category: The Bright Sessions (Podcast)
Genre: 31 Days Of Halloween, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-05 12:37:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21208664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/callunavulgari
Summary: Mark had never assumed in a million years that he would ever see Damien again. He hadn’t factored in zombies.





	catch your breath

**Author's Note:**

> Day 27 of October. Prompts were: quarrel, smoke, taste your medicine, and apocalypse. There were a couple others, but I didn't get to them.
> 
> I realized I hadn't written about zombies yet. Ta-da! Also, this is even more unbeta'd than usual, because it's almost 1AM and I've got work tomorrow, so I'm going to forego the once over. Sorry, guys. Let me know if there's anything glaringly out of sorts.

Mark had never assumed in a million years that he would ever see Damien again. He hadn’t factored in zombies. Nobody ever _really_ considered zombies, because life wasn’t a movie, and zombies weren’t fucking _real_.

Turns out that zombies don’t actually care if they’re supposed to be real or not, because on a nice spring day in early 2020, someone eats someone’s face. And then that person gets up and eats somebody else’s face. It’s a domino effect, and spirals out of control just as quickly and efficiently as all of the horror movies promised.

And Damien was there, shuffling his feet outside of the gas station a couple blocks from their apartment, like he was just waiting for them.

The rest, as they say, was history. You didn’t get to be choosy about who you weathered the apocalypse with.

All of that was a year and a half ago. The world is done. Completely fucked, from one continent to the next. Mark’s seen this movie, he’s read the comics, and he knows that there’s no real recovery from a global catastrophe like this. There were just too many of them and too few living, breathing humans left.

They’ve spent the last eighteen months living on the very edge of a needle, hopping from sanctuary to sanctuary - hotel rooms, abandoned houses, cars. Once they’d spent a week in a shack on the edge of a swamp, at least until creatures of the undead stumbled into their little hovel with the mud still clinging to their withered bodies.

Damien has the wheel now, and he looks tired. They all do, the bags under their eyes so deep that they may as well have been born with them, but he looks like he’s going to drift off any minute. Sam is sleeping fitfully in the backseat, snorting awake every time Damien takes a turn too quickly or they hit a bump in the road. Sometimes, they have to get out and move cars off the road, even when they’re sticking to back roads like this one. Mark is hoping they don’t have to deal with that tonight.

“Want to switch?” he asks, and Damien flicks a glance his way.

“Nope,” he says. There’s enough of a bite to the words that Mark knows better than to argue, so he settles further into his seat. The entire car smells like gasoline, and there’s a rusted hole near his foot that he can see the road through, but the heat is still working, so they’re planning on sticking with it as long as it will last them.

“You ever miss the good old days?” Mark asks, because it’s polite. It’s the kind of question you get everywhere nowadays if you’re lucky enough to run into another human being that doesn’t want to eat you. Nostalgia is what their world runs on, because sometimes you’ve got to rely on the warmth of memory to get you through another day.

Damien snorts. “Really, Mark?”

Mark shrugs. “It was just a question.”

He’s running out of questions at this point. There are only so many things you can hide when your life's a never ending game of hide and seek. They’re either in the car or holed up somewhere or fleeing from the undead. Not a lot of things to do, really, so they made do with talking. Reminiscing. Arguing.

The first time that he kissed Damien, it was in the middle of a grocery store in Atlanta. Sam was grabbing cans of soup a few aisles away, and Damien was needling him, like usual. Only this time, Mark responded in a way that he hadn’t seemed to anticipate, shoving him back against the baking pans and biting the stupid smirk off of his face.

When Sam had rounded the corner a few minutes later and found them furiously necking, she had sighed heavily and told them that it was about damn time.

It worked, mostly. In another reality, maybe there was a time when they would have worked up to something like this. Where he and Sam would have run into Damien and they would have asked themselves the appropriate questions, flipped a coin, and figured out that they wanted to try having him in their lives again.

But in this one, they had this. They had endless car rides and fleeting moments where they could squeeze out a fuck or two, maybe some real sleep if they got lucky.

Sam didn’t kiss Damien often. She still didn’t like him much, but they seemed to have some kind of understanding. If there was time for sex at all, it was easier to have a third person standing between them and the door. But sometimes, Mark would wake up to Damien’s hand down the front of Sam’s jeans or her teeth digging into the groove of his neck. They fucked like they fought, which was to say furiously and not often.

“We should stop for the night,” Mark tells him a good forty minutes later, when his lids keep threatening to flutter closed.

Damien doesn’t fight him on it, just turns the car off of the main road, rumbling along down gravel until he finally comes to a stop on an incline that doesn’t have a ditch off to one side. Ditches, during the apocalypse, are all kinds of bad news.

He turns to Mark expectantly once the engine is off, and Mark works his way over the center console until he’s balanced precariously in Damien’s lap. Damien is smiling at him, a hint of smugness lurking in the corners, right where his lips tick upwards. Mark bends down to kiss it off his face.

They can’t manage much more than rushed handjobs, an undercurrent of want zinging through them like a feedback loop, but it’s good, Damien’s callused hands knowing just the right way to squeeze.

By the time they’ve cleaned themselves off and Mark is sliding back into the passenger seat, Sam is blinking blearily at them from the back seat. Her hair is disheveled and there’s an imprint from the door against her cheek. Over all, she still looks tired, but nowhere near as badly as she had before.

“Did I miss the show?” she mutters around a jaw cracking yawn.

Damien is settling back against the headrest, eyes already closed. “Sure did, princess. Promise we’ll make it up to you later.”

She makes a face, but doesn’t turn him down. Favors are currency in this brave new world of theirs.

“Want me to drive?” she asks, and Damien shrugs, already halfway to sleep.

In the end, they decide against it. Staying in one place for too long is the worst thing you can possibly do, but they’re pretty rural right now. The fields around them stretch for miles, thankfully free of corn or shrub or trees, so they’ve got a clear line of sight.

Mark crawls into the backseat with her, and she welcomes him with a happy little hum, stretching up to kiss him. He thinks about getting her off here, like this, his hand moving under the blankets, her making pretty noises in his ear, but he’s too fucking tired to get it up again, and from the way that she’s looking at him, she’s going to want more than his fingers.

So they sleep curled under the blankets together, and when he wakes there’s a zombie thumping against their window. Its face is mostly caved in, trailing brains and gray, sloughing skin, but it’s got enough left of its vocal cords to moan, which means that more will come.

“Damien,” he says, but Damien is already awake and putting the car back into drive.

He can’t have slept for long. The sun isn’t even up yet, which means they probably stole a few hours max, but his eyes are clear and bright, which is good enough to get them to the next stopping point.

They find a town small enough that there’s only a few zombies milling around, and between the three of them, they take out the ones that they can find. The gas station is ransacked, but they’ve got a couple full canisters in the trunk to tide them over. It’s the food that he’s worried about. They’re on their last can of beans and are more than due for a re-up.

The grocery store is boarded up, which is promising for them if they can figure out a way in. It either means that the place is infested or it’s untouched. Or that it’s inhabited, which could be worse if he didn’t have Damien at his side.

“Open up,” he calls, reaching for the power that always seem to be a thought away these days.

For a moment, he thinks that nothing will happen. Sam shifts uneasily at his side, her bat slung over her shoulder. She’s chewing on her lip, which means she’s nervous. On his other side, Damien is all studied nonchalance, regarding the door with a bored expression.

And then, the door slides open.

There’s a sour faced woman in her middle years on the other side. Behind her huddle a couple of kids, in varying ages of toddler to teenager. He wonders if they’re all hers, or if she somehow managed to save them all.

Damien pushes past without stopping to look at her, vanishing around the corner, his rucksack already open.

Sam hisses, frustrated, and Mark sets a soothing hand between her shoulderblades.

He puts on his most winning smile.

“Sorry,” he says. “We won’t take up much of your time.”

Sam hates it when Mark uses Damien’s powers, and if he’s honest, most of the time Mark does too, but times like these are unavoidable.

“We won’t take much,” he tells her, ushering her past the woman and the kids. She’s still simmering, and he knows that when she sets eyes on Damien again she’s going to start a fight, so he steers her away from the canned goods. The produce has been cleared, which is good because the stink of rotting vegetation is more than he thinks he’s capable of dealing with right now, but the hygiene aisle is mostly stocked.

He leaves Sam to grab some toiletries while he goes for the baby wipes and condoms. They have this down to a science by now. Damien will go for the food, leaving him and Sam to deal with the less essential items. They’ve only got so long before the poor woman starts to wonder why she let a bunch of strangers into their home, and he wants to be out the door before those kids start crying.

There aren’t many wipes left, so he only takes a couple packs. Then he grabs a few razors, a handful of toothbrushes and a tube or two of toothpaste. The condoms are pretty untouched, so he grabs as many of those as he can carry, picking out a bottle or two of lube, and some pregnancy tests, just in case.

When it comes down to it, they’re pretty safe. Mark and Damien don’t have to waste the condoms when they’re with each other, but they’re all aware of how one fuck up with Sam could lead to something bigger than any of them are prepared to deal with. The dangers of having a baby with the world like this is bad enough, but childbirth itself, without proper access to medical facilities might as well be a goddamn death sentence.

So they’re careful. They keep the condoms stocked, and when they’re out, they find other ways to make Sam happy.

A few minutes later, he’s got a full bag and is just starting to consider scouting a couple aisles over when he hears raised voices coming from where he left Sam. It takes less than thirty seconds for Mark to cross the room, and in that time, Sam’s managed to slam Damien back against the shelves, snarling mouth an inch from his smirking one.

It’s deja vu, and for a moment he wonders if this is how Sam felt the first time that she found him and Damien together.

But no, this is different. Sam and Damien’s fights are horrible drag down things. They rarely get physical, but they feed off of each other, words going more and more poisonous until Mark manages to pull them away from each other. Even then, they usually won’t speak to each other for days afterwards.

“Think we should give you a taste of your own medicine,” Sam is hissing, and Damien raises an eyebrow, lanky body stretched out calm and unconcerned under her.

“And what medicine would that be, princess?” he drawls, and Mark gets between them just before Sam can raise her balled fist.

“Is this really the place?” he asks quietly, gesturing over his shoulder to where the kids are gathering curious at the end of the aisle. Reluctantly, Sam uncurls her fingers, a sneer on her lips.

“I _know_ that you haven’t forgotten what it feels like to be under someone else’s control,” she tells Damien waspishly. “Would it kill you to not be an asshole about it?”

“Sam,” Mark says, before Damien can even open his mouth. “I’m the one who did it. Not him.”

She bristles all over like an angry cat. “Yeah, but he’s the one-”

“He got to the food as quickly as he could. I’m sure he didn’t take too much.” He lowers his voice. “I know that it sucks, and you hate it, but this is just what we have to do.”

Her lip quivers, shoulders slumping. “But there are _kids_, Mark.”

“I know,” he says with a sigh. “Which is why we aren’t taking too much. Right, Damien?”

Damien narrows his eyes, and for a moment, he looks mutinous, like he’s going to argue just to be a little shit, but then his eyes flit to the kids and some of the fight goes out of him.

“I grabbed the bare minimum,” he says, then holds the bag open between them as proof. It’s only a little over half full, and the cans are mostly things like green beans or fruit, a couple tins of spam and even fewer of soup. He zips it closed, not looking at Sam as he pushes past her.

“I-”

Mark wraps an arm around her. “I know. It’ll be fine.”

He’s lying through his teeth. These kids won’t be fine. Sooner or later, the food will run out, and then they’ll have to find another place to go to ground, somewhere where there probably isn’t quite as much food. They might even lose people making their way there. But that isn’t his problem. Not today.

They get back out the door again without any issues, and find Damien waiting for them in the car. He’s got a lit cigarette in his hands, and is smoking it slowly, the window cracked to let the smoke out.

Sam piles into the backseat with the bags, and Mark takes the passenger seat again.

Once they’re safely in the car, Damien puts it into drive.

There’s a mutinous silence between them. Mark knows that they won’t apologize, not in so many words. But sometime today, or maybe tomorrow, Damien will offer her an extra water or some of his food, and everything will be right again. At least as right as the world is going to get any time soon.

He hums under his breath, and watches the scenery pass them by.


End file.
